Records Inventory Form
Move past a retention schedule built on guesswork about what records you actually have. Document what exists, where it lives, and who's responsible for it before you decide what to keep or destroy.
A retention schedule written without an actual inventory is built on guesswork, and it shows. The National Archives is direct about the sequence: the schedule should be based on what the inventory finds, not the other way around, and skipping it means you can't confirm the retention period actually covers every legal requirement that applies.
The stakes go up considerably once litigation is reasonably anticipated. Under FRCP 37(e), failing to preserve information you should have preserved can trigger sanctions, escalating to an adverse jury instruction or default judgment if a court finds intent to deprive, and a legal hold issued against an inventory nobody maintained is a hold with gaps in it. If any of it is personal data covered by GDPR, Article 30 adds its own obligation to maintain a record of processing activities, with fines up to €10 million or 2 percent of global turnover for failing to keep one.
Typeform's records inventory form captures what a record is, where it lives, who's responsible for it, and how long it needs to be kept, feeding directly into a retention schedule instead of sitting as a one-off spreadsheet nobody updates, with conditional logic flagging entries involving personal data for the additional detail Article 30 requires. Every submitted entry becomes a timestamped record of what was inventoried and when, the file you want when a retention schedule gets challenged, a legal hold needs to go out fast, or an auditor asks how you know what records actually exist.
A records inventory form documents what records an organization actually has: what they are, where they're stored, who's responsible for them, their format, and any legal or business requirement affecting how long they need to be kept. It's the foundation a retention schedule gets built on.
Because a schedule written without one is guesswork. The National Archives is explicit that a records schedule should be based on the inventory, not the reverse, since the inventory is what tells you the content, context, and actual use of a record well enough to justify how long to keep it or when it's safe to destroy.
It depends on what the court finds. Under FRCP 37(e), a party that failed to take reasonable steps to preserve electronically stored information it should have preserved can face sanctions calibrated to the prejudice caused, and if the court finds the party intended to deprive the other side of that information, sanctions can escalate to an adverse inference or default judgment. An accurate records inventory is what makes it possible to issue a complete legal hold in the first place.
If you're a controller or processor handling personal data covered by GDPR, yes. Article 30 requires maintaining a record of processing activities covering data categories, data subjects, purposes, and recipients. The exemption for organizations under 250 employees is narrow and rarely applies in practice. Failing to maintain this record carries fines of up to €10 million or 2 percent of global annual turnover.
Capture enough to build a defensible retention schedule from it:
- Record type or description
- Format and storage location
- Department or person responsible
- Applicable legal or regulatory retention requirement, if known
- Volume or estimated quantity
- Date of last review
Yes. Typeform's signature question lets whoever is responsible for a record sign off by typing, drawing, or uploading their signature, time-stamps it the moment they submit, and locks the response so it can't be changed afterward, generating a PDF you can keep on file. It's available on Typeform's Growth Flow, Growth Custom, and Enterprise plans.
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